Meanwhile Sunday, Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) said that the absence of a conversion law would pose "an enormous spiritual danger to the Jewish people."

Sephardi chief rabbi Shlomo Amar also stressed the need for the conversion law, calling on the religious political factions to withdraw from the coalition if the law was not approved. "If they heeded my advice," he said, "they would all stand together with one voice and one heart and say 'it's the conversion law or we're leaving.'"

"The Reform Jews are using the political situation to blackmail the prime minister. They sit there and they want to dictate our lives," the rabbi told Kol Barama radio.

Yedioth Ahronoth obtained inspection reports filled out by Hugi and his colleague, Shimon Shimoni, an inspector of the religious Independent Education Center. The reports show that the State has not been enforcing the law which conditions funding upon the number of hours of basic subjects taught in schools.

It appears that many of the schools have continued to receive full funding while neglecting to teach the required hours of basic subjects, and according to the ministry's calculations at least $38 million have been distributed unlawfully to the religious education networks.

..."Two people are inspecting the education plans of tens of thousands of students," she said. "And they are haredim. They won't dare to report the correct hours – they could be expelled from the community."

In 2010, a startling 63% of all students are affiliated with the chareidi sector, and that number is expected to continue increasing.

27% of the students in the city are identified with the dati leumi community, with the remaining 10% from the secular public schools. 17,300 students are chareidi; 7,000 dati leumi and 2,900 in the secular public school system.

Anyone who thinks he will be able to “educate” the haredi public via laws and punishments is wrong and misleading.

This is a community that knows how to fully stand for the principles it believes in. It is also a minority whose lifestyle must be respected, at least the way this is done with other minorities. The problem is that some people refuse to look into the data, for fear it won’t confirm their views.

A rare collaboration between English-speakers and Russian immigrants in Rishon Letzion may soon make the Tel Aviv suburb the first large city in Israel to adopt the immigrant friendly TALI program in all its primary schools.

The TALI program, founded by American immigrants to Israel, provides pluralistic, Jewish education for secular pupils to a network of 84 schools nationwide.

In the wake of last month's ruling that yeshiva students should no longer receive income assistance, a group is now demanding they also be denied personal accident coverage subsidies.

A religious organization has found the insurance, which is provided to all 1.7 million school children in Israel, is also extended to married yeshiva students up to age 45 for a nominal annual fee of NIS 28 to NIS 35 per year, and has opened up a front against the practice.

Most members of Israel's ultra-Orthodox public believe there is hardly any racism in their society, according to a special poll ordered by Ynet following the compromise in the Emmanuel discrimination affair.

The findings also showed that the haredim believe the High Court of Justice is hostile towards them, but that they are the ones who won the battle over education in Emmanuel.

An ultra-Orthodox yeshiva student indicted for flag-burning has asked that the charges be dropped as protected freedom of expression.

The student's lawyer also told the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court that the law, as it stands today, is effectively a dead letter as it doesn't specify intent to dishonor the flag - and so many Israeli citizens effectively break the law on a daily basis without ever being charged.

A haredi riot broke out on Sunday in a postal branch in Jerusalem's Bukharim neighborhood over Ynet news updates. A group of 25 ultra-Orthodox protested at the site over plasma screens showing Ynet news updates which they referred to as "abomination." Several rioters even attacked security guards standing outside the branch.

Bnei Brak Mayor Yaakov Asher said that the only thing that will bring down housing prices in Bnei Brak is the expansion of Modi'in Ilit and Elad, the absorption of Haredim by the communities of Katzir-Harish, near Hadera, and new construction in Betar Ilit.

The Eda Haredit is not alone. Senior rabbis from the central stream of haredi Judaism, led by Lithuanian leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, are joining the protest against the evacuation of graves from the Andromeda Hill construction site in Jaffa.

The rabbis are calling upon their followers to demonstrate against the ongoing work on the site.

MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) also visited the site yesterday to join in prayers with the protesters. Gafni said he had the feeling that a "barbaric attack" was being perpetrated against graves in Israel.

More than 100 haredim blocked Bar Ilan road in Jerusalem on Monday with a large garbage container in protest of the construction on Andromeda Hill in Jaffa, which they claim is damaging ancient graves.

After several visits of the radical ultra orthodox groups, Avi Tessler, the gabbai of the synagogue, noticed that all the prayer books in the synagogue had been damaged. The pages with the prayer for the State of Israel and for IDF soldiers were torn out of the prayer books.

While his classmates spent the summer holidays at the beach or at the pool, vacationing in Israel or abroad, Moshe's focus was on a completely different subject. While they were trying to solve crossword puzzles or Sudoku, Moshe's gifted mind continued to race ahead. Last week, the boy fulfilled his dream of sitting the Chief Rabbinate's ordination exams - and he is only 14 years old.

For years, the Jerusalem city council was considered a stronghold of the Shas movement, and it was the model on which the political movement based itself to recreate the same success. Today, there is hardly a city council in the country that doesn’t have its own local Shas representative, including the bastion of secularism, Tel Aviv.

A huge crowd of 10,000 Jews gathered at the old gates of the Temple Mount Monday night and declared their allegiance to the holy site, which rally organizers said is being separated from Jews by discriminatory practices by the police.

MK Otniel Schneller (Kadima) visited a gay youth center in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to meet with members of the gay community. The club welcomed the visit, saying he is the first Orthodox Knesset member it has ever hosted and hopes he won't be the last.

The Heichal Meir synagogue in Tel Aviv is considering backtracking on its plan to host classes given by Rabbi Mordechai Elon, who has been accused of sexually exploiting his students, the synagogue's rabbi said yesterday.

Heichal Meir could face a confrontation with Takana, a watchdog group that aims to prevent sexual exploitation by authority figures in the religious world, if it doesn't withdraw its invitation to Elon.

Esther Lapian is a teacher and teacher educator in the field of Bible studies and the teaching of Jewish texts. She works extensively in Israel and abroad as a consultant to Jewish educational organizations from every religious sector.

Most of the religiously observant student teachers whom I have met are not at all interested in teaching in the mamlakhti-dati school system (the religious public school system in Israel).

...Why is this true? Why are these bright, highly motivated, religiously observant young people, who are extremely knowledgeable in both Jewish and general studies, opting out of the mamlakhti-dati school system? And if they are opting out, then who is teaching our children?

From his own experiences with narrowmindedness, (Rabbi Yehuda) Amital – and Amital’s students – learned to more fully appreciate the importance of tolerance for the diverse opinions of others.

Amital embraced liberal democracy as the best form of government in a contentious Jewish state and entered into dialogue with secular and non-Orthodox Jews.

Amital’s political endeavors with Meimad may not have resulted in electoral windfalls, but his impact on what could have been a very monolithic religious Zionist society is undeniable. Thankfully, Amital’s legacy is alive in hundreds of students.

Amital never ceased regarding the world of religious Zionism as the community to which he most closely belonged. The educational philosophy he developed over the decades cultivated traditional yeshiva scholarship while also placing a rare premium on independent thinking.

In the hasidic and mystical side of his character he prefigured the neo-hasidic revival of recent years—of which, however, he was also a genuine critic.

While encouraging his students to strive for authenticity in their religious lives, he urged them not to fetishize this at the expense of ethical values or of their identification with Jewry at large.

Q: But according to the halakhah, a pilot cadet whose father is Jewish and mother is Christian is not Jewish.

A: I don’t agree.

I can show you halakhic responsa from one hundred and one hundred and fifty years ago that state that if a person sacrifices himself for the sake of Israel, he is designated first and foremost as someone who has chosen the people of Israel.

If a person becomes a combat soldier and is prepared to lie down night after night waiting in ambush, his entry certificate to conversion is different from someone who comes for other reasons, since he has already chosen the people of Israel and is ready to sacrifice himself for the sake of the people of Israel.

It is difficult to breathe in Jerusalem, and difficult to pray, and that's why I travel to Tel Aviv: not to escape from the sanctity but to achieve a moment when there is holiness that emanates from the person rather than the place.

Rani Jaeger, among the founders of the “Israeli Prayer House” in Tel Aviv explains why on the Sabbath eve, he goes down to Tel Aviv to pray.

Gilad Malach is a Ph.D. student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is writing his dissertation on “Strategies of public policy regarding ultra-Orthodox Jews.”

The Gavison-Medan Covenant authored by Rabbi Yaakov Medan and Professor Ruth Gavison, is the most important covenant that has been written in this generation and it has not yet said its final word.

Gilad Malach writes about the creation of this unexpected document, which was produced when a jurist and a Hebrew University law professor who founded the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) collaborated with the head of Yeshivat Har Etzion.

It is clear that certain sectors of the Israeli Jewish population also do not want the vision of Israel representing all Jewish approaches.

The actions of the Israeli rabbinate and the haredi rabbinical leadership are clear. They want a state that reflects only their brand of Judaism, and everything else, including, by the way, modern Orthodoxy, has immense obstacles placed before it.

Mourning on the Ninth of Av in this day and age flies in the face of both secular Zionism and religious Zionism. It contradicts the right of Jews around the world to decide where they prefer to live. The exile is over, and the temple has not been rebuilt because we don't want to do it.

The only ideologies that can justify continuing this observance are those that see democratic Israel as a heretic entity defying the majesty of God on earth. But if you are not a member of the Eda Haredit or a settler from Yitzhar, how can you mourn on Tisha B'Av in good conscience?

One of Israel’s best-known legal scholars, Prof. Ruth Gavison, is urging a rethink of the provisions of the Law of Return that could lead to eliminating automatic citizenship for new olim.

In a paper titled “The Law of Return at 60 Years,” Gavison, a professor at the Hebrew University, writes that citizenship would best be granted not automatically to every oleh, but “according to sensible conditions, such as a length of stay in the country, integration in it, and a declaration of loyalty toward [the state] as is practiced in the case of other candidates for citizenship.”

After months of fits and starts, advocates for Ethiopian aliyah are hoping that a visit to the African country this week by Israel’s minister of immigrant absorption will help set in motion a process that will bring some 7,500 additional Ethiopians to Israel.

So far, the Israeli government has committed to checking only 1,800 of them for aliyah eligibility and bringing those who qualify to Israel.

The overwhelming majority of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party supports the continued aliya of the Falash Mura community from Ethiopia and a lesser majority believes that delays to their immigration over the past few years stem from discrimination and racism, according to a report received by The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Commissioned by the Public Committee on Ethiopian Jewry, which is headed by former Supreme Court judge Meir Shamgar and includes high profile members such as Canadian parliamentarian Irwin Cotler and Chief Rabbi of Ethiopian Jews in Israel Yosef Adaneh, the study is the first of its kind to focus exclusively on the ruling Likud party’s attitudes toward the controversial aliya.